Advances in microprocessor and related technologies have led to wide spread deployment and adoption of numerous general purpose as well as special purpose computing devices. General purpose computing devices, such as servers and desktop computers, are now endowed with computing power that was once reserved for the most expensive high end computers, requiring special conditioned environments to operate. At the same time, advances in networking, telecommunication, satellite, and other related technologies have also led to an increase in connectivity between computing devices, making possible networked computing over private and/or public networks, such as the Internet.
Conventionally, computing devices are managed by/through their operating systems. The management tasks may include device configuration, controlling user access (by authorized users only), logging various system activities, and so forth. As technology and applications continue to evolve in sophistication, the task of managing a computing device has become increasingly complex. Further, it is often necessary or desirable to manage a computing device when the operating system is non-operational (“frozen”), or otherwise unavailable.